Two recent Zippys offer remarkable vernacular architecture on the US coasts: a great rocky pile of a fantasy home, created by a performer of enormously popular entertainments — a castle on the Connecticut! — on the east, restaurants in the shape of a parasol — SoCal novelty architecture! — on the west:

(#1) Castle built a hundred years ago by actor William Gillette; reminiscent of the house in the Flintstones animated tv series; topped by the Carvel soft ice cream symbol

(#2) Parasol restaurant in SoCal’s Seal Beach (1967), sister to the first Parasol in Torrance (1961)

While namechecking the famous American photographers Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and Weegee, Zippy peers in the window of the Darkroom at 5370 Wilshire Blvd. in LA, now a bar and restaurant, originally a camera shop in the shape of a camera.

Looking for buidings in the shape of a camera will then take us around the world, thanks to a construction company in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia.

The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores MI (which brings us a satisfying instance of the –palooza libfix); and the Castello di Amorosa near Calistoga CA (which offers a range of California wines and also Belgian-style chocolate). The first designed to reproduce the vernacular architecture of the English Cotswolds, the second a fantasy re-creation of an Italian castle.